And héedfullý béar in your bréast
A gállant lády’s fáll.
§ 140. In Modern English the Septenary has been extensively used, both in long and in short rhyming lines. One special variety of it, consisting of stanzas of four lines, alternately of eight and six syllables (always with masculine ending), is designated in hymn-books by the name of Common Metre.
In the long-lined form this metre occurs at the beginning of this period in poems of some length, as, for instance, in William Warner’s Albion’s England, and in Chapman’s translation of the Iliad. Here, too, the ending of the line is almost without exception masculine, and the rhythm, on the whole, pretty regular, although this regularity, especially in Chapman, is, in accordance with the contemporary practice, only attained by alternate full pronunciation and slurring of the same syllables (Romanic -ion, -ious, &c., and Germanic -ed, &c.) and by inversion of accent. The caesura is always masculine at the end of the first hemistich, but masculine or feminine minor caesuras are often met with after the second or in the third foot, sometimes also after the first or in the second:
Occásioned thús: | Chrýses the príest || cáme to the fléet to búy. i. 11.
To plágue the ármy, | ánd to déath || by tróops the sóldiers wént.ib. 10.
Secondary caesuras also occur, though less frequently, in other places in the line, particularly in the second hemistich:
But íf thou wílt be sáfe begóne. || This sáid, | the séa-beat shóre. ib. 32.
All mén in óne aróse and sáid: || Atrídes, | nów I sée. ib. 54.